Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Dreams

By Johna Ferguson

I don’t know how many of you can remember your Psych 1 class in college, but I can remember one certain aspect of it; that was the mention of Jung and his dream theories.

At that time I can’t recall dreaming much, maybe I didn’t have time to work that into my schedule, but now in later life with more time on my hands, I am reminded of it. Perhaps it is because I seem to dream more now than then. Maybe it takes a certain number of years and memories to build up before one has a good backlog for a real variety of dreams. I just don’t know.

We all dream “they” say, but lately I’ve been able to remember more and more of my dreams when I awaken in the middle of the night or in the morning. Some of those early night dreams are forgotten by the time morning rolls around, but some of the really weird ones are still strong in my mind.

And how about color? Are some of your dreams in what seems bright Technicolor or are they all black and white?

The content variety also seems endless. Sometimes I am dreaming about the past, my family, especially my sons when they were small; but other times I seem to be on a cloud just flying through various colorful things. I occasionally try to analyze some of them but most of the time, I just try to enjoy them; just figments of my imagination usually blown out of perspective.

But Jung spent his lifetime trying to figure them out and even wrote about his experiences of them while undergoing analysis himself in a very old book that has just surfaced. He wrote it all down in cramped long-hand and now the spotlight is again on him and his strange theories.

I doubt any of us will ever see the book, much less understand it, but that renewal of him has brought me again around to trying to figure out more of my own dreams and how they relate to my experiences.

In fact, it is now 2:15AM and I am sitting at my computer trying to write down the dream I just had, writing all the facts down before they disappear. But even after just awakening, those facts which seemed so strong a half-an-hour ago, have vaporized. Maybe they are just like labor pains; something we forget about so we won’t mind having more children.

If any of you “out there” have any ideas how to capture dreams, please let me know. At my age, I don’t think I want to take the two the required buses to the U of W to audit a college class on dreams and then I might possibly forget what the professor said by the time I reached home.

Comments

Johna, I, too, dream vivid, colorful dreams--some delicious, some horrifying, and write down the most vivid of them, sometimes. I suggest saying them over to yourself immediately upon waking, then writing them down. Fortunately mine are mostly just before I awake in the morning, so I don't have to get up in the night to record them.

Ooh how fitting. I just had a dream in which I answered the door and my ex was there and he came in and then more people arrived, some I knew and some I did not. I looked in the mirror and my face was covered in dusty thick dirt and my eyes were red and almost closed. I could not find a washcloth to clean up during the whole dream and no one seemed to see me. I now think I was dead and it was my funeral party in my home.

32 years after my divorce, I have a reocurring dream about my ex-husband. Although I was the one who initiated the divorce, in my dreams he is the one who rejects me. It was an unhappy marriage and my daughter believes that the dreams are caused by post-traumatic stress.

1) Start a dream log -- use a tape recorder on the nightstand and try to rouse out of your dream long enough enough to describe it for the log.

2) Read about lucid dreaming. I started in 1975 with Patricia Garfield's book CREATIVE DREAMING (not about dream interpretation!) which addresses how to induce lucid dreams; what to tell kids about nightmares; who dreams and when; dreaming experts of world cultures (especially the Senoi); how to tell if you are dreaming, how to stop a bad dream, how to restart a good dream, etc. etc. etc....)

I want so badly to dream about the lost love of my life, my husband who passed away a year ago. I've had one dream or a "visit" from him in the past year. I miss him every day & I still talk to him, I cry easily when I reminise about him. A great love a great loss, I don't believe in closure, too much love betwen us & too many memories to close the book on after 50 years. Love is eternal.

I, too, took the Psych course and studied Jung. Wasn't his theory that we put the scenario in our dreams and it's a way of working something out that is going on in our lives? I kept a dream journal during the time I was studying Jung. I did get an insight into something that was bothering me from the pattern of my dreams.

You are instructed to write down how you felt (frightened, sad, happy, etc.) when you first woke up if you can't remember the dream. When you read the series of dreams you recorded a theme will emerge and help you analyze the dreams.

I have a recurring dream that is unsettling, but I know what is causing it. And, yes, I do dream in color at times.

I've always been a dreamer. I've noted how they changed as life progressed.

I'm a retired firefighter and still most nights I'm on duty. I practice during the day that I'm retired. If the dreams get too stressful, I'm able to remind myself, in the dream, that I'm retired and the best way to make the rescue is to wake up. And I do.

One other thing I've noticed is that with age and prescription drugs, the mind spins more prolific dreams.